Did… You just call my teenager a bitch?

I mean, I do that, too at times, but still…

They don’t if you’re constantly taking them off to put stuff inside them between the phone and the black.

She refuses to carry a purse or even a wallet and just shoves her ID and her teen-limited cashapp card in. And sometimes even spare cash if she has any.

If I can’t own it, I’m not buying it.

My kid does.

And I wish she wouldn’t. To clarify, we’ve bought her cases and she destroys the case in days.

She’s more careful with her bare phone than she is with it in a case.

I use a case to add magsafe to my android phone, because I like the magnetic holder/charger idea ,na swish all phones had it built in.

I have a cheap, clear magsafe case for my Pixel 9.

I also have a screen protector, and when I have the phone out of the case, it feels weird in my hand when I brush the edge of the screen protector.

As someone who used to download C64 games in the 1980s, from a BBS, trust me. Pirating existed decades before BitTorrent.

Decades.

Don’t forget to include the hacked controller firmware that reports the drive size as triple what it actually is.

Then that’s changed since the last time I toyed with the idea. Which, granted, was probably 20 years ago…

There. Was that at hard?

It’s apparently easier than you not being a jackass, at least.

The big issue is that your network provider is also the physical provider, and there’s no real competition as a result.

When most people got their Internet service over telephone lines, your ISP didn’t need to also own the telephone lines, they just needed some telephone numbers.

When the telcos themselves got into the business of providing internet access, they pushed out the competition.

The 1996 Telecommunications Act, written by a Republican Congress, and signed into law by a Democratic president (Clinton) is largely responsible for the current state of affairs.

The “Information Superhighway” is a toll road, built by taxes, but owned by private corporations.

What’s crazy is that the government paid these corporations to build this infrastructure.

When your government pays, say, a road building company to build roads, one doesn’t then grant the ownership of those roads to that company.

But that is EXACTLY what we did with our communications infrastructure.

3 words.

Stand.

And.

Deliver.

I’ll admit to being mostly right of center in a lot of ways gasp HERE??! Lol.

But I’m no boot licker.

Anarchocapitalist is probably the closest category.

That said, there’s nothing I like more than fighting back against “the man” whether that “man” is a corporation or the government itself.

So when corporations, or anyone really, tries to fuck me over?

Stand. And. Deliver. Bitch.

I turn 49 in August. I’ve had a home computer since 1984. I am of the generation that could work on the old school computers, and I’ve been pirating since the 80s.

If you want me to PAY you, make it worth the money. Otherwise, I’ll get it however I can get away with.

Got my first home computer in 1984. I’ve sailed the high seas off and on pretty much my entire life.

I hung up the hat for a while when Netflix really had their heyday, and had pretty much every show and movie.

But then studios and networks started pulling shows from Netflix, and creating their own streaming services, prices kept creeping higher and higher.

I finally had enough. They wanna play? Ok. We’ll play.

Stand and deliver bitches.

What’s hilarious is, Netflix damn near killed piracy completely. Until every single network decided to do it themselves.

They forgot the most important part of piracy. Access.

I am NOT paying for your entire streaming service if I want to watch a movie.

Not to mention, a LOT of older movies should be in the public domain by now, and therefore free to watch. But nope, in fact, many older movies are simply gone. Never to be seen again.

What’s crazy is you can build a kit plane for less than what this costs, and flying a kit plane does NOT need a pilot license in the US.

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

It’s Apple. They make everything other than just using their own stuff harder.

It’s kinda their whole shtick.

If he doesn’t want it, I’ll take it! 🤣

Racism is bigotry.

Tribalism is bigotry.

Antisemitism is bigotry.

Hating gays is bigotry.

It’s all bigotry.

There’s nothing special about any form of bigotry. It’s all horrendous.

Saying that doesn’t invalidate the horrendous nature of any form of bigotry.

We really aren’t. The difference is, the most successful of us are. And those are the ones you typically seem to meet overseas. Because the less successful of us can’t afford the trip.

Prebuilt is almost always the wrong answer. That holds true in way more fields than just technology as well.

The phrase “bought versus built” comes to mind.

You can almost always build exactly what you need for less money or headache than you think.

Will you maybe spend a little more than buying some cheap one-off? Possibly. However, the best part of building it yourself is that you’ll also typically know exactly what you’ve got, and if you use off-the-shelf parts, replacements and upgrades are easier in the long run.

TCO. Total Cost of Ownership.